With thousands upon thousands of players seated together every day, the World Series of Poker has a habit of throwing together some interesting table draws.
We’ve already had Alex and Kristen Foxen being seated right next to each other in the $10K Mystery Bounty, but Wednesday brought together a trio of faces that would give anyone of a certain vintage a definite feeling of nostalgia.
Over in the $10K Dealers Choice Championship three icons of poker squared off once again, with Daniel Negreanu, Phil Hellmuth and Gus Hansen — a group with 25 WSOP bracelets, countless TV appearances and a wealth of poker history under their belts — taking their shot at the $354,444 first prize. Our guys were on the scene too.
It’s a 6-Max event, which means half that table boasted nailed-on legendary status. But as we know, reputations only go so far when duelling with the whims of fate, not to mention tangling with many of the best players in the world. Negreanu busted close to the bubble, but the wrong side of it, going out in 27th with the payouts kicking in at 23rd. Hellmuth went deeper, finishing 15th, while Hansen is still in there but propping up the chipcounts, 14th of 14.
Ryan Hoenig has a healthy lead at the top, but if Hansen needs inspiration heading into the final day, he could do worse than take a look at developments in the $25K Mixed PLO/NLH High Roller, and the exploits of Ben Lamb.
Plenty of chips get stacked in the rack of Lamb
The $25K Mixed is a new event on the schedule and one plenty of high rollers were looking forward to. Most now will be looking back at it, as 245 entries are down to just 5. Top of the pile heading into the final day is Ben Lamb, and by a good margin, though it didn’t always look that way.
Is two big blinds enough to win a tournament? It just might be. Earlier in the day Lamb found himself with his back to the wall and a microstack in front of him. 14 remained — the bubble had burst — but Lamb, like his 13 competitors, was focused on the $1,302,233 up top.
To say he managed to spin it up with his two big blinds is an understatement. When play resumes on Thursday he’ll start with 71 big blinds; no one else has more than 28. Ap Garza (27.7bb), Chongxian Yang (21.5bb), Robert Cowen (18.8bb) and Brandon Mitchell (13.1bb) have their work cut out to catch Lamb.
But as we’ve already seen, 2bb is all you need to mount a comeback. Compared to that, everyone in the field is sitting pretty. They’ve also all locked up at least $303K.
Newhouse, old story
Those readers experiencing waves of nostalgia at the sight of Negreanu, Hellmuth and Hansen playing together will surely remember the story of Mark Newhouse.
After finishing 9th at the WSOP Main Event in 2013 Newhouse returned to play the big one the following year, posting a message before play began that read: ‘Just bought into the main event day 1c. Not f**king finishing 9th again’.
Of course, he finished… 9th again.
It should go without saying that finishing anywhere near 9th in the Main Event is an incredible achievement, and to do it in back-to-back years is a feat that may never be repeated. But Newhouse has wisely stopped making such predictions.
That hasn’t stopped ‘Texas Mike’ Moncek, though. Mike had a stack in the $25K Mixed High Roller when he posted the following message:
The shoutout to Newhouse was cute, but backfired. Moncek went out, naturally, in 9th.
The stuff of fantasy
By now you’ll have noticed that PokerOrg is all-in on fantasy poker this WSOP, and you can catch up on all the news and developments relating to your teams in our constantly updated live story, which runs all summer long.
By now you’ll also have seen who’s hot and who’s not when it comes to collecting points so far. To wrap things up here, watch some interesting insights below from David ‘ODB’ Baker, whose ODB League we’re partnering with for our own Fantasy Freeroll.
Stick with PokerOrg every day for more from the WSOP!
